Lynne Ramsay is a tremendously talented director, as anyone who has seen her films We Need to Talk About Kevin and Ratcatcher can tell you, which makes the latest ripple in her career quite a bummer: When production began Monday on her latest film, the Natalie Portman-fronted Western Jane Got a Gun, Ramsay was nowhere to be found. Deadline broke the story, reporting trouble right up to the start date. Ramsay still hasn't issued comment on the matter, but the film's producers have already lined up a replacement in the form of Gavin O'Connor, director of Warrior and Tumbleweeds (and the pilot of The Americans).

Deadline branded Ramsay's departure a "SHOCKER," but it's not as rare as you'd think. Despite the intense work of developing a picture and preparing it, filmmakers have frequently walked away from pictures before—or even during—production. Below, I've collected a few examples.

Gone With the Wind

George Cukor was one of the most competent and reliable craftsmen of Hollywood's golden age—and already had made a reputation as such by the time he was handed the reins of the highly anticipated film version of Gone With the Wind. (His credits at the time included Dinner at Eight, Little Women, David Copperfield, Camille, and The Women.) So it wasn't much of a surprise when he got the gig; what was shocking was when he left the picture three weeks into production. He issued a joint statement with super-producer David O. Selznick, explaining their parting of ways thus: "As a result of a series of disagreements between us over many of the individual scenes of Gone With the Wind, we have mutually decided that the only solution is for a new director to be selected at as early a date as is practicable." The reasons for his exit remain the object of gossip, ranging from script clashes with Selznick to personality problems with Clark Gable, but the film carried on under the hand of Victor Fleming (who was pulled from Wizard of Oz, still in production; King Vidor took over for Fleming) and, after Fleming had something of a breakdown, studio hand Sam Wood (who would later direct for the Marx Brothers). And Cukor bounced right back—the following year, he nabbed a Best Director Oscar nomination for The Philadelphia Story.

The Outlaw

This 1943 Western was ostensibly a retelling of the Pat Garrett/Billy the Kid tale, but it was really about something else entirely: Jane Russell's rack. The busty beauty was plucked out for stardom by producer Howard Hughes, who famously designed an intricately engineered bra to highlight Ms. Russell's considerable, erm, assets. Director Howard Hawks, who thought he was hired to make an oater, started eying the door. As he later explained, "I had a chance to do Sergeant York with [Gary] Cooper, so I said to Hughes, 'You've always wanted to direct, why don't you finish this thing?'" Hughes took him up on the offer, and though Hawks directed a few scenes that ended up in the final cut, Hughes is credited as the sole director for the controversial picture.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Few writer-director partnerships were as fruitful as that of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan, the famed stage director who mounted several productions of Williams' works on Broadway, and directed his Baby Dolland A Streetcar Named Desire for the screen. Kazan directed the original 1955 stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (starring Ben Gazzara and Barbara Bel Geddes), and was widely presumed to be on board for the film version. But he ultimately passed, because he couldn't convince the scribe to rewrite the third act (and bring Big Daddy back into the action). The film was ultimately directed by Richard Brooks, who also helmed the film version of Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (another work originally directed on stage by Kazan).

Alien 3

The third film in the Alien series, which marked the feature debut of David Fincher, was a troubled production from the outset—even before Fincher came on board. In fact, the franchise's producers originally plucked another rising young talent to helm: Vincent Ward, who had made a visionary (yet low-budget) effort in his native New Zealand called The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey. Ward's concept for the film (explained in detail in this terrific Empire write-up) was to set it on a "wooden planet" in a distant past. Alien III got a greenlight with Ward as director; designs were worked up, pre-production began, sets were built, and a release date of Easter 1990 was set. But as the project grew bigger and more tangible, Ward started getting notes about his script and vision of the story that were progressively more broad and conceptual. Finally, when he was summoned to the office of a key Fox executive and told that the Wood Planet, his entire hook, was being jettisoned, he walked. "It was a weird situation to find myself in," Ward told Empire. "I'm one of those people who like to see things through. I don't mind compromising if it will improve the story. But you're dealing with people where it's not known as a 'film'—it's called a 'franchise'. So you don't want your Kentucky Fried Chicken or your McDonald's to look different. You gotta have the same colored walls, and the doors in the right place..." Ward went on to make the critically acclaimed Map of the Human Heart and What Dreams May Come.

Layer Cake

With its fast pace, Cockney overtones, and portraiture of hardboiled British gangsters, the 2004 film Layer Cake certainly felt like a Guy Ritchie movie—and for good reason, since Ritchie was initially slated to direct J.J. Connolly's adaptation of his novel. But Ritchie was still reeling from the 2002 flop of Swept Away, and trying to keep his marriage to that film's star, Madonna, afloat; he also had another project he wanted to devote his full attention to. So he ultimately stepped aside, allowing his friend and longtime producer Matthew Vaughn to make his directorial debut. Layer Cake was well received, not only sparking Vaughn's filmmaking career (he would go on to Stardust and X-Men: First Class) but upping the profile of star Daniel Craig, who landed the Bond franchise shortly after playing this tuxedo-wearing tough guy. Ritchie, on the other hand, saw his next two films (Revolver and Rocknrolla) sink, only to find success at the helm of the Sherlock Holmes franchise.

The Wolfman

The low-budget yet creepily effective 2002 Robin Williams film One Hour Photo was a big breakthrough for director Mark Romanek, best known for his distinctive music videos. His next gig was a giant step up, in profile and budget: Universal tapped him to direct their reboot of the classicWolfman franchise, with Oscar winner Benicio del Toro in the leading role. But when the project got out of his control, Romanek bailed. "He's a purist, an artiste, an exquisite craftsman, but he just had a budget schedule he couldn't accommodate," as "an insider" told Deadline's Nikki Finke, who sneered, "Talk about career suicide." Actually, not so much. When The Wolfman finally hit screens in 2010, it tanked with critics and audiences, earning terrible reviews and not even half of its reported $150 million budget domestically. Romanek went on to direct the critically acclaimed 2010 adaptation of Never Let Me Go.

The Hobbit

Guillermo del Toro was a hot commodity after his 2006 hit Pan's Labyrinth, and after directing a sequel to his 2004 film Hellboy, he lined up a primo job: taking over the smash Lord of the Rings gig from Peter Jackson, who was producing a two-part adaptation of The Hobbit, with del Toro in the director's chair. The filmmaker spent two years on the project before shocking cinegeeks worldwide by walking away in May 2010. "In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life," del Toro said in a statement. "After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien's Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures." Those delays were a result of the complicated rights involved in the saga, which was set up at financially troubled MGM, though there were whispers that Jackson's post-LOTR slump (he'd just released the reviled Lovely Bones) had prompted him to decide that maybe a return to Middle Earth would be a smart career move. Jackson's first (of three) Hobbit films was released to decent box office and mediocre reviews last December; Pacific Rim, del Toro's first directorial effort in five years, is currently in post-production.

Dune

Frank Herbert's Dune is an enterprise that has been nothing but trouble for Hollywood. The first attempt to adapt it to film, from El Topo director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was abandoned after an extended development period in the 1970s; when it was finally made by David Lynch a decade later, the final product was a mess. After a miniseries version aired on the Sci Fi Channel in 2000, Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg was attached to a new film adaptation. Berg worked on the film for a year before dropping out, explaining, "for a variety of reasons it wasn't the right thing." Next up was Taken director Pierre Morel, who worked a year on the project before leaving as well. As before, the massive scope of Herbert's book (or books, depending on how much ground they planned to cover) proved problematic for filmmakers, and when Paramount's rights to the book expired in 2011, they let the project die.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

I tend not to get too worked up over TV-to-film adaptations, but this is one I was looking forward to: Steven Soderbergh and frequent collaborator George Clooney, taking on the ultra-cool '60s spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The film was in development for years, with Soderbergh brushing up on the series (episodes were peppered throughout his much-discussed "Media Diet" list) and his favorite screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!) writing the script. But it fell apart in 2011, when Clooney dropped out of the project—his bad back would make the required action scenes impossible—and Soderbergh and Warner Brothers were unable to settle on a budget or acceptable leads for the film. Seemingly every young actor in Hollywood was suggested, and all were either vetoed by one of the parties or unavailable (The Playlist has a blow-by-blow here). Soderbergh ultimately opted out and filled the sudden, unexpected hole in his post-retirement filmmaking spree with Side Effects, a script Burns had been shopping around for a while. Meanwhile, the studio handed the project to almost-Layer Cake director Guy Ritchie; Tom Cruise is reportedly considering taking the lead.

Highlander

No, not the original—the upcoming sequel/reboot/thing, which has been in the works, with Ryan Reynolds taking over for Christopher Lambert and 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo directing. But the filmmaker left the project late last year, apparently after waking up one morning, looking at himself in the mirror, and saying, "Wait, I directed 28 Weeks Later! Why the hell would I make a Highlander movie with Van Wilder?"

Most Popular

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

There’s no way this man could be president, right? Just look at him: rumpled and scowling, bald pate topped by an entropic nimbus of white hair. Just listen to him: ranting, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent, about socialism. Socialism!

And yet here we are: In the biggest surprise of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, this thoroughly implausible man, Bernie Sanders, is a sensation.

He is drawing enormous crowds—11,000 in Phoenix, 8,000 in Dallas, 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa—the largest turnout of any candidate from any party in the first-to-vote primary state. He has raised $15 million in mostly small donations, to Hillary Clinton’s $45 million—and unlike her, he did it without holding a single fundraiser. Shocking the political establishment, it is Sanders—not Martin O’Malley, the fresh-faced former two-term governor of Maryland; not Joe Biden, the sitting vice president—to whom discontented Democratic voters looking for an alternative to Clinton have turned.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

A controversial treatment shows promise, especially for victims of trauma.

It’s straight out of a cartoon about hypnosis: A black-cloaked charlatan swings a pendulum in front of a patient, who dutifully watches and ping-pongs his eyes in turn. (This might be chased with the intonation, “You are getting sleeeeeepy...”)

Unlike most stereotypical images of mind alteration—“Psychiatric help, 5 cents” anyone?—this one is real. An obscure type of therapy known as EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is gaining ground as a potential treatment for people who have experienced severe forms of trauma.

Here’s the idea: The person is told to focus on the troubling image or negative thought while simultaneously moving his or her eyes back and forth. To prompt this, the therapist might move his fingers from side to side, or he might use a tapping or waving of a wand. The patient is told to let her mind go blank and notice whatever sensations might come to mind. These steps are repeated throughout the session.